Title: The Crow and the Pitcher

Author: freak-pudding

Disclaimer: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and all associated articles are the sole property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. No copyright infringement intended.

Summary: Schedules were a wonderful thing; she wondered why she'd never had one before. Post-Intervention

Author's Note: All chapter tiles will be explained at the end of the story. Which, by the way, I have no idea when that's gonna be. Reviews are my proverbial tube-feeding (and the Republicans say I can never take it out).

Chapter Six: In Rerum Natura

She changed the sheets again. This is normal; this is good.

She moved now through life in a series of normal, cohesive patterns. Nothing strange, nothing not planned or arranged or scheduled.

Every morning she woke Dawn at six and headed downstairs to fix a healthy, full-pyramid breakfast. At seven Xander picked Dawn up and drove her to school. Eight o'clock found her training at the Magic Box. Break for lunch; another hour, and she went to Giles's apartment at one to help take care of Spike.

He hadn't woken up yet. He hadn't even moved. Giles had long ago given up. She'd ignored every word.

She started by opening the door wide, letting fresh air in. She knew he didn't need it, but it made her feel better. And it made the air smell a little less like a funeral home.

She stripped the sheets and got new ones, rolled him gently back onto the bed. On his left side, swish-swish, onto his back swish-swish, and he was clean. A quick check of the bandages and she was out the door with a cheery wave, garbage in hand. She left the further probing to Giles and his rudimentary medical knowledge.

Anya had thought of nearly everything on her little raiding run the other day. Stitches, gauze, ointments, antibiotics (not that he needed them), tape, scalpels, scopes, clamps; anything and everything they could possibly have needed was stored away beneath Giles's kitchen sink, right next to a dusty box of Weetabix.

She returned home just before three, loads of laundry and bill collectors' calls waiting to be screened. Xander brought Dawn at three-thirty; she did her homework at the dining table. Buffy cooked something nice and well-balanced, setting it on the table by five, and the two of them ate in silence. Dawn helped clear the table, and if she was finished with her chores, she watched TV until seven. Then she went up to her room and stayed there alone until Buffy came in at nine to say good night. A quick round of patrol ending at eleven, and Buffy was home in bed as well, snuggled beneath her comforters.

Even the dream was becoming routine.

She didn't know when or how it started; she just knew that it had been there for a long time. Maybe it had always been there.

Joyce and Spike sat side-by-side on the couch in her living room, sunlight streaming through the window behind them. Joyce held Spike's hand in her lap, stroking the charred skin absently.

"Hurry up, Buffy," she said, staring at the silent TV. "You'll be late for school."

"High school's over, Mom," Buffy replied. Spike said nothing.

Buffy crossed to the window, peering at the crack between the curtains.

"It's getting dark out there."

"It's darker in here."

Spike whimpered. When Buffy turned back, the bandages covering his eyes were gone, revealing blue irises in a sea of red.

"Poor baby," Joyce cooed. Spike's fingers began to crumble in her lap. There were cuts on the outside corners of his eyelids, a measure Giles had introduced to take the pressure off his eyes from the build up of blood around his optic nerves. Buffy had left the room before he could ask her to hold the bowl beneath the cuts.

Spike stared silently up at her, his gaze reproachful and forlorn.

Why?

He asked her with every fiber of his being, every bit of his presence begged to know the reason.

"I don't know," Buffy said simply, and then she woke up.

Lying awake, shaking at night, Buffy thought constantly about what the dream meant. Her dead mother holding Spike's hand, the bright sunlight contrasting with the darkness of the house…

Throwing off the covers, Buffy decided that it didn't make sense. This was the fourteenth time she'd had the dream, and it was really starting to grate on her nerves. She knew that Spike wanted something from her, something scarily close to that hallowed crumb, something that Buffy just wasn't ready to give yet, despite what her capacity to love might have been.

The very fact was that she still didn't feel very loving. She said the word all the time, just to test it out. As she shopped, slayed, trained, cleaned, bandaged, studied, washed, dried, lived—she said the word. Over and over and over in her head until the letters melted together and jumbled around and it no longer sounded like a word at all.

She loved Dawn; she loved her mother and father; she loved Giles and Willow and Xander and Anya and Tara and Angel—

Buffy frowned, padding softly down the hall to the bathroom. Now that one felt funny on her tongue.

She closed the door tightly behind her, going to the sink for a long drink of water. When she was done, she stared hard at her reflection.

"I love Angel," she said. "I love Angel. Loooooove him. Love."

She made a face; the Buffy in the mirror stuck her tongue out.

"I love Angel."

Something was off.

"High school's over, Mom."

And it was, wasn't it?

In all the years of her life, especially those spent as the Slayer, Buffy had never done more growing up than she had in the past few months. A mystically endowed, irritating baby sister thrust upon her, her boyfriend's untimely exit, her mom's unexpected death… When she looked in the mirror now, she saw Buffy the Woman, not Buffy the Young Girl.

Maybe that's why it felt so weird saying she loved Angel.

Angel had been the perfect match for Girl-Buffy, with the swooping in briefly with dire warnings and terrible forbidden-ness. Their love had been wild and passionate and painful: all the things a good first love should be. A good young love. But she wasn't a little girl anymore.

The truth was that Angel was a terrible match for the woman she'd become, the hard fighter looking for a death wish and the darker part of herself. Her brief tangle with Dracula had proven that much. She needed someone hard, someone rough, someone not afraid to treat her like the tough creature she was, not some porcelain doll on a shelf.

And Angel put her on that goddamn shelf. His perfect, untouchable, innocent Slayer. Willing to wait out the century or whatever until he Shanshued. Perfectly happy to drop anything and everything that might have changed in her life to be with him. Xander had asked her as much the other day.

"So if Angel just poof and went human, you'd leave us all to marry him?"

He was joking, of course. Sarcasm and bright smiles to smooth over the awkward moments when she knew they were all just bursting to ask about the Spike thing. That was something she was just not discussing.

And Riley. Buffy shuddered.

Mr. Normal. Mr. Not-So-Right-After-All. Mr. Lets-A-Vamp-Ho-Suck-His-Arm-The-Stupid-Bastard—

Yeah. Not going there either.

She washed her hands and dried them on the pink towel hanging beside the sink. She needed to sleep. She knew she'd be exhausted tomorrow, but it just didn't seem to matter.

Love. Give. Forgive.

"Got two down, and I'm workin' on the third," she promised her reflection before flicking off the bathroom light and going back to bed.